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Selected Lectures for GA 211 ...

Date Name of Lecture Place Year

1922-03-24 pm The Three Stages of Sleep Dornach 1922

1922-04-02 pm Exoteric and Esoteric Christianity Dornach 1922

1922-04-02 pm Exoteric and Esoteric Christianity Dornach 1922

1922-04-13 pm Lecture V -- The Teachings of the Risen ChristFrom: The Festivals and Their Meaning II Easter

The Hague 1922

1922-04-14 pm Lecture: Knowledge and InitiationFrom: Knowledge and Initiation - Cognition of the Christ Through Anthroposophy London 1922

1922-04-15 pm Lecture: Cognition of the Christ Through AnthroposophyFrom: Knowledge and Initiation - Cognition of the Christ Through Anthroposophy

London 1922

1922-04-24 pm Man's Life on Earth: Lecture IFrom: Man's Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds

London 1922

1922-04-24 pm Planetary Spheres: Lecture IFrom: Planetary Spheres and Their Influence on Mans Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds

London 1922

1922-06-11 pm The End of the Dark Age Vienna 1922

The Three Stages of Sleep

The Three Stages of Sleep

A lecture by

Rudolf Steiner

Dornach, March 24, 1922

GA 211

A lecture, hitherto untranslated given at Dornach on March 24, 1922. Published in Anthroposophy Today, No.

4, Winter 1975. It is the second of twelve lectures in the volume The Sun Mystery ... Death, Resurrection, and is

also known asMystery of Golgotha and its Relation to the Sleep of Man.In the collected edition of Rudolf Steiner's works, the volume containing the German texts is entitled,Das

Sonnenmysterium und das Mysterium von Tod und Auferstehung. Exoterisches und esoterisches Christentum,

(Vol. 211 in the Bibliographic Survey, 1961). The translator is unknown.

Copyright 1987

This e.Text edition is provided through the wonderful work of:

Anthroposophy Today

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Spiritual Science cannot hand people something which, once assimilated, is enough for the rest of life. I have often pointed out that

there exists no short summary of a world view which can be kept at hand in one's pocket. In place of ready formulas, science of the

spirit provides something with which the human soul must repeatedly unite itself, which must be repeatedly inwardly assimilated and

digested. External truths such as those provided by natural science we can, if we have a good memory, take in and then possess them

once and for all. That is not possible with spiritual-scientific truths, the reason being that the truths of natural science are lifeless

concepts. The laws of nature are dead once they have been formulated into concepts, whereas spiritual-scientific truths are livingconcepts; if we condemn them to lifelessness because we accept them as if they were external truths, then they provide no

nourishment; then they are stones the soul cannot digest.

Rudolf Steiner

Aspects of Human Evolution, lecture VIII, Berlin 24 July 1917

The Three Stages of Sleep

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Rudolf Steiner

A lecture given in Dornach, 24 March 1922

Published in Anthroposophy Today

Winter 1987 No 4

WAKING LIFE is the state of consciousness that is most familiar to mankind, but within this sphere the problems of existence are notunveiled. If this waking consciousness, as it serves us for ordinary life and knowledge, could solve the problems of life without

further ado, such problems would no longer exist. Their solution would be a matter of course. Human beings would never come to thepoint of questioning. The fact that someone asks about the deeper foundations of life and, while not perhaps coming to the point of

definitely formulating questions as to the problems of life yet retains the longing to know something that ordinary consciousnesscannot yield, proves that from the deepest foundations of the human soul, though in a more or less unconscious way, something arises

which indeed belongs to the human being, but which must first be sought if it is to rise up into the light of consciousness.

This leads those who do not observe life sufficiently closely into speculation and into the forming of all kinds of philosophies

which eventually prove to be unsatisfying. But anyone who observes the phenomena of life with a certain impartiality will soon

realise that, in the sleeping condition, as opposed to the waking condition of consciousness, something is concealed, and that anunderstanding of life may result from an understanding of the sleeping condition.

We have often spoken of these things, but it is necessary to return to them again and again, for Anthroposophy can only be

understood when the attempt is made to approach facts from the most varied points of view.

Out of the state of sleep there emerges first the life of dreams. This dream life consists of pictures, and if one pays attention to this

life of dreams, it is easy to observe that its pictures are related to ordinary life and consciousness. Even if it can often be said thatthings are dreamed of in a way in which the dreamer has never experienced them, I would answer: the parts out of which the dream is

made up, the details of the pictures, are all the same taken from ordinary consciousness.

It is different with regard to the dramatic element of the dream, to the way in which the dream, as it grows in intensity, evokes

feelings of anxiety, of joy, of compulsion. The meaning of the course taken by these dream pictures lies more deeply within humannature, and we can understand this when we consider the following example. A man may dream, for instance, that he is walking along

a road and comes to a mountain. He passes into a cave in the mountain. At first it is dusk, and then it gets darker. An unknownimpulse urges him to go farther; he has a sense of uneasiness and this increases till he stands there in a state of terror, let us say, of

falling into some inner chasm or the like. He may then wake up in this feeling of terror, for it has lasted until the time of waking.

Again, we may dream that we are standing somewhere and a man is approaching us from a distance. He comes nearer and nearer,

and when he is quite close it appears that he is preparing to make an attack. There is an experience of increasing anxiety. The otherman comes still nearer and the harmless instrument which he had shown us from afar changes into a murderous weapon. The dream

transforms things in this way. Anxiety becomes terror, and once more we awake full of this terror which continues into waking life.

Here we have two entirely different pictures. In the first dream we have a series of pictures which led us into the mountain

cavern, and in the second a series of pictures connected with an approaching enemy. The soul-experience has been the same althoughthe picture sequence has been quite different. What the soul has lived through is something entirely different from what is consciously

experienced on waking. The pictures in themselves are not the essential thing. The point is the inner drama through which the soulpasses; how there was first an impulse or something that approached the soul in the place of an impulse how this passed over

into feelings of anxiety and terror, and how at last the dreamer came to the point of rousing himself out of sleep and returning toordinary consciousness. Forces that increase in intensity are there behind the dream and these forces clothe themselves in pictures.

The forces are not perceptible but they are the essential factor.

I might multiply these two picture sequences many times, for the same soul content may be clothed in 10, 20 or a hundreddifferent pictures. Thus we must say that here is something that takes place in the soul which the human being does not observe and of

which the person knows nothing. Only the pictures are known. These pictures are experienced in dream consciousness, but the

essential thing is the process of intensification: first anxiety, then greater anxiety, and lastly actual terror. The dream pictures are moreor less taken from ordinary life the mountain, the cavern, the approaching enemy, his weapon all these are borrowed from life.

The pictures derive their content from life, but this is only the clothing.

But now when, through what I have often described as Imaginative consciousness, we have the power to remain behind this

clothing, building no pictures of this kind, but remaining with Imaginative consciousness within the forces of the soul which havegiven rise to the anxiety, fear and terror, then something quite different happens.

When a person sleeps, the astral body and Ego are outside the physical and etheric bodies. In normal circumstances when humanbeings awake, they re-enter the etheric and physical bodies very rapidly; but when, in somewhat abnormal circumstances, someone

does not immediately penetrate into the physical body, but before entering it penetrates more intensely into the etheric body, thenthese pictures are formed out of life. For in ordinary consciousness there is no conceptual activity in actual sleep. The dream pictures

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arise only at the moment when someone is penetrating into the body and passing through the etheric body, or at the moment of falling

asleep when, on leaving the physical body, the sleeper lingers in the etheric body. These dream pictures taken from ordinary life areformed only in the intermediate conditions. Imaginative consciousness, however, enables human beings to live in those forces of the

soul which stand behind the dream while the person is wholly outside the body. The individual lives then in a different world of

reality, a world which is passed through between falling asleep and awaking. Between falling asleep and awaking human beings livein this world without consciousness. You can picture this to yourselves as though a man sank under water, and there, losing all

consciousness, can only regain it when the waters bear him to the surface and make him free again. The same thing that there takesplace in a physical sense takes place in the soul when people sleep. They dive down into the spiritual world and there lose

consciousness. They pass out of the body with their soul and lose consciousness. On waking they rise up again and regainconsciousness, and this re ascent is the entrance into the body. When, as has been said, someone does not enter the body immediately,

but becomes aware of the passage through the etheric body, there arise the pictures of the dream. But when we reach a stage where theappearance of such dream pictures is no longer allowed and, existing wholly outside the physical body in the spiritual world, we

perceive pictures, these are no longer arbitrary pictures but are such as you will find in the description of world-evolution in myOccult Science. All such descriptions as those given inOccult Science originate in the way just characterised.

If it is asked what is to be found in Occult Science, the answer must be: Thoughts are there. These thoughts can be studied. Ihave emphasised again and again that the healthy human intellect can reflect upon these thoughts. Thoughts are there, but they are not

ordinary thoughts: they are thoughts which are creatively active in the cosmos. Human beings can live in these thoughts when theystand on the other side of the threshold leading into the spiritual world. They can live in these thoughts which are active in the

cosmos. This is the first thing that they will find when they enter the supersensible world.

Picture to yourselves someone asleep. During sleep, processes of the greatest intensity and far-reaching effect take place in the

soul. Nothing is known of all this because in sleep the person is without consciousness. In the morning the person re-enters thephysical body, diving down instantaneously into it. The eyes are used to perceive light and colour, the ears to hear sounds, and so on.

The person becomes conscious. But there is this intermediate state where, before entering directly into the physical body, the personenters the etheric body. Then the dream arises. But should that person become conscious before penetrating into the etheric body, he

or she would then be conscious in the outer ether which fills the whole cosmos; there would be consciousness of what is described inOccult Science.

If, for example, you were to become conscious in the middle of the night without returning to your physical body, so that thisphysical body rose up before you and you were to look upon it for it would then be visible you would become conscious of this

cosmology, of what I have described in Occult Science. What is there described may be called the formative forces of the cosmos, orcosmic thoughts. Just as people have their own thoughts in waking life, they can now say: The Earth has originated in such and such

a way; it has passed through a Moon condition, a Sun condition and a Saturn condition as I have described in Occult Science.

This kind of perception in the spiritual world is only one of three existing kinds. When human beings consider their wakingcondition of consciousness, they know that in this consciousness they can distinguish between thinking, feeling and willing. But just

as the waking consciousness has these three states, so also the night consciousness, which in an ordinary way is an unconsciouscondition so far as the human being is concerned, has its three states. In the period between falling asleep and awaking people are not

always in the same condition any more than they are during the period of waking consciousness. A person is awake when thinking or

feeling or willing; consciousness can also function in three conditions during sleep. Imaginative consciousness is only able to beholdthe cosmic formative forces if we have first acquired consciousness and knowledge of them. In sleep we all live within these

formative forces of the cosmos, within the cosmic thoughts; just as man is immersed when he jumps into water, so is everyoneimmersed, in sleep, in the formative forces of the cosmos.

Besides this life within the formative forces of the cosmos there are two other conditions of the life of sleep, just as in waking lifethe human being not only thinks, but feels and wills. Thinking, the possession of thoughts, corresponds in sleep to the life of the

cosmic formative forces. This means that, when we become conscious in the lightest sleep, we are living in the formative forces of thecosmos. It is as though we were swimming through the cosmos from one end to the other, floating through thoughts thoughts

which are, however, forces. In this lightest sleep we float through the thought-forces of the cosmos. But there is also a deeper sleep a sleep from which nothing can be brought into the waking life of the day unless we have practised special exercises of the soul. A

person can bring back something into the waking life through the dream only from the lightest sleep, but, as I have already said, thesedream-pictures are not authoritative, for the same dream can be clothed in the most varied pictures. In very light sleep we can always

dream, that is, we can always bring something over into consciousness; we can feel that we have had at least some experiences insleep. This is, however, only the case with the very lightest kind of sleep. Of deeper sleep nothing can be known until we can enter it

with Inspirational consciousness, and then we become aware of more than is described in Occult Science. In that work I have, ofcourse, described something of what sounds forth from Inspirational consciousness, but let us make it quite clear and this is a

matter which can only be explained through Anthroposophy in what way the human being experiences this transition from light

sleep to that sleep from which no dreams can be brought back into the ordinary conscious life.

When sleep is so light that dreams can be brought back into ordinary life, then one who is able to look into these worlds perceivesthe surging, weaving thought-pictures, the cosmic Imaginations which reveal cosmic mysteries showing that human beings indeed

belong to a cosmic world just as they belong to the world in which they live consciously from awakening to falling asleep. For what Ihave described in Occult Science is not as though one merely painted something on a surface, but everything is in perpetual

movement, in perpetual activity. At a definite moment, however, pictures begin to appear in this world through which human beingspass in light sleep, though they know nothing of it. The pictures become distinct; their light is enhanced; they reveal certain realities

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lying behind them. The pictures fade away again, and nothing remains in the consciousness but a kind of feeling that they have died

down. Then they rise up again, and in this alternation of activity and withdrawal, something appears which can be called the harmonyof the spheres, cosmic music. Thus cosmic music does not reveal itself only as melody and harmony but as the deeds and activities of

those beings who dwell in the spiritual world, as the deeds of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, and so on.

The spiritual beings who guide and direct the world out of the spirit are seen, moving as it were through the surging sea ofpictures. It is the world that is perceived through Inspiration, the second world. Let me call it the revelations of spiritual cosmic

beings. And this world of the revelation of spiritual cosmic beings is the second element of sleep, as feeling is the second element ofwaking consciousness. Thus during sleep not only does the human being enter the realm of cosmic thoughts, but within these flowing

cosmic thoughts there are revealed the deeds of cosmic beings who belong to the spiritual world.

In addition to these two conditions of sleep there is yet a third of which human beings have as a rule no sort of awareness. They

usually know that they can sleep lightly, and they know also that dreams emerge from this light sleep. They know that there is adreamless sleep. But the utmost that they can know of this third condition of sleep is that on awakening they may be conscious of the

fact that, during sleep, they had been faced with some difficulty, with something which they must conquer in the first hours afterawaking. I am sure that many of you are familiar with this feeling in the morning, where one knows that one has not slept quite in the

ordinary way, but that something was there which has left a certain sense of difficulty, that will take some time to overcome when oneregains consciousness in the morning. This is an indication of that third condition of sleep, the content of which can be apprehended

only through Intuition. It is a condition which is of great significance to the human being.

When they are in the lightest sleep human beings are still actually concerned with a great deal that belongs to the experiences of

waking consciousness. In a certain sense they still participate in their breathing processes; they also participate, although not from

within but from without, in the blood circulation and the other processes of the body. In the second condition of sleep they do notactually participate in the processes of their bodily life; they are concerned with a world that is common both to the body and to thesoul. Some element connected with the body plays over into the soul, just as something passes over from the light into the plant when

it is developing in the light of day. But when they are in the third condition of sleep, there is something within them which if I mayso express it has become mineral, for in this state the salts of the body are especially strongly deposited. During this third state of

sleep a very strong storing up of salts takes place in the physical body with their souls human beings live in the inner being of themineral world.

Now let us imagine that the following experiment may be made. You lie down in bed and fall into a light sleep from whichdreams may emerge into ordinary consciousness. You pass over into a deeper sleep from which no dreams proceed, but in which the

soul is still connected with the physical body. You then enter into a sleep in which strong accumulations of salts take place in thephysical body. The soul can have no relation to what is thus taking place in the body. However, if you had placed beside your bed a

mountain crystal, it would be possible for you to enter with your soul right into the inner being of the crystal; you would perceive it

from within outwards. This is not possible either in the first or in the second condition of sleep. In the first state of sleep, the contentof which can enter into the dream, you would, had you dreamed of the crystal, still perceive it as some kind of crystal it would

certainly be a shadowy experience, but something of the nature of a crystal would be there. In the second state of sleep the crystalwould be experienced in a less definite sense; and if you could then still dream that is not possible in the ordinary way but we will

imagine it to be so then you would have the experience that the crystal becomes indefinite and forms itself into a kind of sphere or

ellipsoid, and then recedes again. But if you could dream in the deepest sleep that is, if you could bring into it the consciousness ofIntuition then out of this deepest sleep, this third condition of sleep, you would so experience the crystal that it would seem as

though inwardly you followed these lines of form to the apex, and back again. You would experience the inner being of the crystal;you would be living within it. And so also in the case of other minerals. Not only would you experience the form, but also the inner

forces. In short, the third condition of sleep is one which lifts human beings wholly out of their bodies and places them within thespiritual world. In this third stage of sleep we live with the essential being of the spiritual world itself. That is, we stand within the

essence, within the being, of Angeloi, Archangeloi and of all those beings whom we otherwise perceive outwardly, in theirmanifestations. Between waking and sleeping we see with our sense consciousness, as it were, the external manifestations of the Gods

in nature. During sleep we enter either the world of pictures, in the first condition, or into the world of manifestation, the revelation ofspiritual beings, in the second condition. And when we reach the third condition we live within the divine spiritual beings themselves.

Thus, just as in our waking consciousness we live the life of thinking, feeling and willing, so during sleep we either flow with thecosmic thoughts, or out of these cosmic thoughts the deeds of divine spiritual beings are revealed, or these spiritual beings so take us

up into themselves that we rest within them with our souls. Just as thoughts and ideas are for the waking consciousness the clearestand most definite things of all, while feeling is darker and really a kind of dreaming, and willing the condition of the greatest

insensibility as it were a kind of sleep so we have these three degrees of the sleeping consciousness. We have the sleep in whichordinary consciousness experiences the dream and a higher clairvoyant consciousness the cosmic thoughts; we have the second state

of sleep which for the ordinary consciousness remains hidden, but so appears to the consciousness of Inspiration that everywhere the

deeds of divine, spiritual beings are revealed; and we have the third state of sleep, which to intuitional consciousness is life within thedivine, spiritual beings themselves. This can be expressed by saying that we dive down, for instance, into the inner being of the

minerals. This third state of sleep has, however, yet another element of great significance for the human being.

In the second stage of sleep, as I have said, we find in the surging pictures, alternately appearing and disappearing, the cosmicbeing of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and so on. But we find ourselves as well. We find ourselves as beings of soul; not, however, as we

now are, but as we were before birth, before conception. We learn to know how we have lived between death and a new birth. Thisbelongs to this second world. And every time we pass through dreamless sleep, we live in this same world in which we lived before

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we descended into our physical body. But when we pass over into the third condition of sleep and are able to awake there, when the

consciousness of Intuition awakes, then we experience our destiny our karma. We know then why certain capacities are ours in thislife as the results of a previous one. We know why in this life we have been led into connection with this or that personality; we learn

to know our destiny, our karma. We can learn to know this destiny and I speak now from another point of view only when we

are able to penetrate into the inner being of the minerals. If we are able to see the crystal not only from without but from within naturally we must not break it up, for that would still be to see it only outwardly, but we must feel fully within it, in the way I have

described when we thus see the crystal from within, we can understand why this or that blow of destiny has befallen us in life.Take any kind of crystal take an ordinary salt-cube. We look at it from without. That is how it is perceived in ordinary

consciousness. Life then remains impenetrable. But if we are able to penetrate within it the size in space has nothing to do with it when we look at it from within, looking around in every direction, we are in that world in which we can understand our destiny.

We live in this world every night when we pass into the third condition of sleep.

Before the Mystery of Golgotha, in the period of evolution before the appearance of Christ on Earth, human beings we

ourselves in earlier incarnations entered very often into this third condition of sleep. But before they sank down into this sleep theirAngel appeared and raised them out of it again. This is the significant thing: we can always raise ourselves out of the first state, and

out of the second state of sleep, but not out of the third. Before the appearance of Christ on Earth we must have died in this thirdcondition of sleep if Angels, or some other beings, had not raised us out of it. Since the appearance of Christ, the Christ-force has

been united with the Earth. Every time that we must awaken out of this third state of sleep, the Christ-force which came to be unitedwith the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha must come to our aid. The human being can enter into the inner being of the crystal

but cannot emerge again without the Christ-Force. When we gaze behind the veils of existence, we see the significance of the Christ

Impulse for the earthly life. Once again, then, I emphasise that the human being could enter into the crystal, but could not emergeagain.

After the appearance of Christ on Earth, after the Mystery of Golgotha, these things were strongly felt in certain regions, for

example in Central Europe, where there was still a vivid, ancient, pagan consciousness but where, nevertheless, the Christ revelationwas known. It was realised that many people had died because they had fallen into this deep sleep, and that they need not have died

had Christ come to their aid. This was felt, for instance, with regard to Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa. In spite of the fact thatso far as the outer physical world was concerned Frederick Barbarossa was drowned, this feeling was there, and it was very definitely

there with regard to Charlemagne.

What happened to such a soul according to the consciousness of the Middle Ages? It passed into the interior of the crystal, thence

into the mountain, and there it must wait until Christ should come to raise it out of its deep sleep. All such legends were connectedwith this consciousness. The deep connection of the Christ Impulse with the Earth since the Mystery of Golgotha has brought it about

that the world of Angeloi, Archangeloi and other spiritual beings is still able to raise human beings from this deep sleep; otherwise,when they sank into this third condition of sleep, they could not be brought back out of it. This is connected with the Christ-force

itself, not with belief in the Christ-force. No matter whether a man belongs to this or that religious confession, what Christaccomplished on Earth was an objective fact, and what I am here describing as an objective fact is wholly independent of belief. I will

speak of the significance of belief on another occasion, but what I am now stating is an objective fact having nothing to do with belief.

How did these things come about? Into the spiritual world itself there entered a different destiny, a destiny which I will describe

in the following way. Human beings here in the physical world are born and they die; the characteristic of the divine, spiritual beingswho belong to the higher hierarchies is that they are not born, neither do they die, but only undergo a transformation. Christ, Who

until the time of the Mystery of Golgotha lived with the other divine, spiritual beings, resolved to know death, to descend to Earth, tobecome man, and within the nature of man to pass through death, thereafter to return to consciousness through the Resurrection. In the

divine-spiritual world it was an event of the deepest significance that a God should experience death. We can thus say that, in thehistory of the evolution of the Earth, there came about the mighty event that God became man, and that through this His power

manifests as I have described. The God Who became man has such power in earthly life that He is able to raise our souls out of theinterior of the crystal when they have passed into it. When we speak of Christ we are speaking of the cosmic Being, the God Who

became man. What, then, would constitute the antitype? The antitype would be the man who has become god. This would not,however, be an absolutely good god but, just as Christ descended into the world of men and took death upon Himself, that is, assumed

a human form in order to be able to participate in human destiny, so we are led to the opposite pole to the man who, having freedhimself from death, having liberated himself from human bodily conditions, within earthly conditions becomes a god. Such a man

would then cease to be mortal. He would wander about the Earth not, of course, under the same conditions as an ordinary mortalhuman being who must pass from birth to death, and from death to a new birth. A man who had thus become a god would exist on

Earth as a man who had unlawfully become god-like. As the Christ is a God Who has lawfully become man, we must seek Hisantitype in the man who has become god, who, mortal no longer, has unlawfully assumed the god-nature. Just as in the Christian

tradition we have in Christ Jesus the God Who has become man in righteousness, so are we also directed to Ahasueris, the man whohas become god in unrighteousness, who has laid aside the mortality of human nature. We have the polar antithesis of Christ Jesus in

Ahasueris. That is the deeper foundation, the deeper significance of the Ahasueris legend. This legend narrates something that is a

reality, speaking of a man who wanders over the Earth. The figure of Ahasueris is actually there, wandering over the Earth frompeople to people. This Ahasueris figure exists the man who has unlawfully become god.

If we wish to gain knowledge of historical truth we must turn our attention to such matters; we should observe how beings and

forces from the supersensible world work down into the physical world; how Christ came from the spiritual world into the physicalworld; and further how again the sensible world works back into the supersensible. We must recognise in Ahasueris a real cosmic

force, a real cosmic being. A consciousness of this wandering of Ahasueris has always existed, though of course he can be perceived

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only with clairvoyant vision and not with physical eyes. The legends of Ahasueris have a true objective foundation. We cannot

understand human life if we only observe it externally, as it is described in history books.

Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ has dwelt in our inner being. Just as when we look inwards with quickened sight wecan perceive Him there, so also when we look at human life and the eye of vision is opened there appears this figure of Ahasueris

and this is the case in most of those in whom clairvoyance arises, as it may happen unawares to the person who steps across thethreshold of consciousness. People may not perhaps always recognise him; he may be taken for something different. It is nevertheless

possible for Ahasueris to appear to us, as it is also possible when we look into our inner being for the Christ-figure to shine forth.

These things belong to World Mysteries which now, in this age when many Mysteries are destined to be revealed, must be made

known.

Exoteric and Esoteric Christianity

Exoteric and Esoteric Christianity

A lecture by

Rudolf Steiner

Dornach, April 2nd 1922

GA 211

Exoteric Christianity is to be found in the Gospels and as they have been interpreted through history;esoteric, inner Christianity is the living teaching of the Risen Christ: resurrection. Today it lies in the

resurrection of thinking: how dead thoughts can be awakened to life in the form of moral impulses.

Translated from shorthand report unrevised by the lecturer. In the collected edition of RudolfSteiner's works, the volume containing the German text is entitled,Das Sonnenmysterium und das

Mysterium von Tod und Auferstehung. Exoterisches und esoterisches Christentum (Vol. 211 in the

Bibliographic Survey).

This English edition is published in agreement with, and the kind permission of theRudolf Steiner

Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland. From GA# 211.

Be sure to read another version of this book,Exoteric and Esoteric Christianity(pub. 1948).

This e.Text edition is provided through the wonderful work of:

Various e.Text Transcribers

Search for related titles available for purchase at

Amazon.com!

In Rudolf Steiner's autobiography (chapters 35 and 36), he speaks as follows concerning the character of this privately printed matter:

The content of this printed matter was intended as oral communications, not to be printed ...

Nothing has ever been said that is not in utmost degree the purest result of developing Anthroposophy ... Whoever reads this

privately printed material can take it in the fullest sense as containing what Anthroposophy has to say. Therefore, it was possible

without hesitation ... to depart from the plan of circulating this printed matter only among members [of the Anthroposophical

Society]. It will be necessary, however, to put up with the fact that erroneous matter is included in the lecture reports that I have not

revised.

The right to a judgment about the content of such privately printed material can naturally be conceded only to one who knows what

is taken for granted as the prerequisite basis of this judgment. For most of this printed matter the prerequisite will be at least the

anthroposophical knowledge of the human being and of the cosmos to the extent that their nature is set forth in Anthroposophy, and

of what crisis in the form of anthroposophical history in the communications from the world of spirit.

EXOTERIC and ESOTERIC CHRISTIANITYDornach, April 2nd 1922.

The evolution of mankind is recorded in documents that have been preserved as religious records, or as other documents relating

to world-conceptions. But it must be emphasized over and over again that, in addition to these records that have influenced mankindthroughout history (and there is, indeed, a deep justification for this exterior influence), there are other records, which we may term

esoteric records.

When people spoke in a deeper sense of a knowledge of man and of man's conception of the world, they always made a

distinction between an exoteric teaching, that gives a more exterior knowledge of things, and an esoteric teaching; only those who hadtrained their hearts and minds accordingly, were able to penetrate into this teaching. In Christianity, too, especially as far as its central

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http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/ExEsCh_index.htmlhttp://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/ExEsCh_index.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=c4systems&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=external-search%3Fsearch-type=ss%26index=books%26keyword=Exoteric%20and%20Esoteric%20Christianity%20Rudolf%20Steinerhttp://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA028/TSoML/GA028_c35.htmlhttp://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA028/TSoML/GA028_c36.htmlhttp://wn.rsarchive.org/Covers/exoesochrist_cov.htmlhttp://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/ExEsCh_index.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=c4systems&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=external-search%3Fsearch-type=ss%26index=books%26keyword=Exoteric%20and%20Esoteric%20Christianity%20Rudolf%20Steinerhttp://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA028/TSoML/GA028_c35.htmlhttp://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA028/TSoML/GA028_c36.html

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point, the Mystery of Golgotha, is concerned, we must make a distinction between exoteric conceptions and esoteric knowledge. An

exoteric contemplation of Christianity, accessible to all the world, is contained in the Gospels. Side by side with this exotericcontemplation, there has always been an esoteric Christianity for those who were willing as I have said before to prepare their

hearts and minds in an adequate way for the reception of an esoteric Christianity.

All that could be gathered of the intercourse of the Christ who had passed through death and had risen from the dead, with thoseof his disciples who were able to understand him, was of the greatest importance in this esoteric Christianity. You know already that

the Gospels contain very little about the intercourse of the risen Christ with his disciples. But what the Gospels tell us concerning thisintercourse of the risen Christ with his disciples, can indeed give us an inkling and a foreboding of something very special, that

entered the evolution of the earth through the Christ who rose from the dead. But we cannot go beyond such forebodings, without an

esoteric knowledge.

These inklings of a truth acquire weight and significance if we add to them Paul's utterances. Paul's words acquire a particularmeaning, for he assures us that he was able to believe in Christ only from the moment in which the Christ appeared to him through the

event at Damascus. This gave him the sure knowledge that Christ had passed through death and that, after his death, he was connectedwith the evolution of the earth as the living Christ. The event at Damascus gave Paul a knowledge of the living Christ and we should

bear in mind what this impiles, when it is said by a man like Paul. Why could Paul not be convinced of the true existence of theChrist-being before the event at Damascus? We must bear in mind what it implied for Paul, initiated to some extent in the Hebrew

teachings that the Being who lived on earth as Christ-Jesus, had been condemned to a shameful death on the cross in accordance

with human laws and justice. Paul could not grasp that the old prophecies referred to a Being who had been condemned lawfully tothe shameful death through crucifixion. Until the event at Damascus, Paul saw in the shameful crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth the

proof that He could not be the Messiah. Only the experience at Damascus convinced Paul; the vision at Damascus convinced him of

the truth of the Mystery of Golgotha. In spite of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth or better, the Being who was incarnated in Jesus ofNazareth had undergone the shameful death on the cross, something very deep and great is implied in this confession of Paul's

conviction. The traditions that still existed in the first centuries after Christ, no longer exist. They may exist, at the most, in the formof outer historical records kept by some secret society that does not understand them. We must find again, through an

anthroposophical spiritual science, that which surpasses the scanty communications concerning the Christ, after the Mystery ofGolgotha. This is what we must find again: What did the risen Christ tell to the disciples that were around him, and that are not

mentioned in the Gospels? For, what the Gospels say of the apostles who met Christ-Jesus on the way to Emmaeus, and other thingsrecorded of the apostles, are steeped in tradition and refer to simple souls who were unable to advance to an esoteric knowledge. For

this reason we must go beyond this and ask: What did the Christ say after his resurrection to the disciples who were really initiated?

If we want to understand this, we must begin by taking into consideration the frame of mind in which men of past ages took up

the real Mystery of Golgotha and how the Mystery of Golgotha changed their disposition.

When we speak of the great truths of the past connected with man's earthly evolution, a modern man finds it very difficult tounderstand that the first men who lived on the earth did not possess a knowledge of the kind termed knowledge by us. The first men

who lived on the earth were able to receive the wisdom of gods through atavistic, clairvoyant capacities. This means nothing less thanthis: Divine beings who descended to the earth from higher worlds could impart their teachings to human beings in a spiritual way,

of course and these, in their turn, taught other souls. In the ancient past of human evolution on earth, it was a well-known fact that

men were taught by the divine beings themselves, who descended to the earth from spiritual worlds. This condition, transcending theearthly one, could be attained especially by those men who had passed through the initiation in the Mysteries, where for the most part,

they were outside their bodies with their souls and were able to reveive the communications of the gods in a spiritual way, becausethey were not dependent on the outer form of speech, or spoken words. They did not receive these communications in a state of mind

resembling today's dreaming state, but in a living intercourse with divine beings which took place spiritually, and where they receivedwhat these beings considered to be their own particular wisdom. This wisdom at first consisted of communications (if I may call them

thus) of the gods concerning the abode of human souls in the divine world before descending into an earthly body. During that state ofconsciousness which I have just described, the gods taught human beings what the souls experienced before their descent into an

earthly body through conception. Then men felt as if they were being reminded of something, and they found that the communicationsof the gods reminded them of their experiences in the world of the spirit and soul, before birth, i.e. before conception.

An echo can still be found in Plato that this was indeed so in ancient times. Today we can look back on a divine spiritual wisdomreceived here on earth by men who were in the frame of mind just described, a wisdom received we may indeed say it in the real

sense of the word from the gods themselves. This wisdom was of a special kind: namely, of such a kind, that people strange asit may seem today knew nothing of death. It may seem strange to you today, yet it is so: the oldest inhabitants of the earth knew

nothing of death, just as the child knows nothing of death. The people who were instructed in the way indicated by me and passed onthis instruction to others who still possessed an atavistic clairvoyance, became conscious at once of the fact that their soul-being had

come down from divine-spiritual worlds into a body, and that it would leave this body. They considered this an advance in the life of

the spirit and of the soul. Birth and death appeared to them as a metamorphosis, as something which is the beginning and end ofsomething. Were we to draw this schematically we might say that people saw the human soul in its progressive evolution and

considered life on earth as an interlude. But they did not see in the points a and b a beginning and an end, they only saw the

uninterrupted stream of the life of spirit and soul. They did see, of course, that the people around them died. You will not think that Iam comparing these ancient men with animals; for, although their outer aspect resembled that of animals, these oldest of men had a

higher soul-spiritual nature. I have already explained this before. But just as an animal knows nothing of death when it sees anotheranimal which is dead, so did these ancient men know nothing of death, for they received only the idea of an uninterrupted stream in

the life of soul and spirit. Death was something pertaining to Maya, the great illusion, and it made no great impression on men, for

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they knew life, only. Although they saw death, they knew nothing of death. For, their spirit-soul life was not ensnared by death. They

saw human life only from within. When they looked at birth, human life extended beyond birth, into the spiritual. When they lookedat death, the life of spirit and soul again extended beyond death, into the spiritual; birth and death had no meaning for life. Life alone

was known not death.

Men gradually came out of this frame of spirit. On tracing the evolution of mankind from the oldest times to the Mystery ofGolgotha, one may say: more and more, human beings learnt to know death. They learnt to know death more and more as something

that made an impression on them. Their souls became entangled in death, and out of man's feelings arose the question: what happensto the soul when man goes through death?

You see, in far distant ages people never contemplated death as an end. Their problem was at the most one dealing with thespecial nature of metamorphosis involved. They asked whether the breath leaves man and continues streaming, and whether the soul

enters thereby into eternity; or else, they had some other conception of the way in which the life of spirit and soul continues. Theythought about the nature of this continuation, but they did not think of death as an end. Only with the approach of the Mystery of

Golgotha people really felt that death has a meaning and that life on earth is something that ends.This, of course, did not assume theform of a problem formulated in a philosophical or scientific way, but it entered the soul as a feeling. Men on earth had to come to

this feeling, for it was necessary for the evolution of mankind that the understanding, or the intellect, should enter life on earth. Butthe intellect depends on the fact that we are able to die. I have often mentioned this. Man had therefore to become entangled in death.

He had to become acquainted with death. The old ages in which man knew nothing of death were all non-intellectualistic. Men

received their ideas through inspirations from the spiritual world and did not think about them. There was no intellect. But the intellecthad to come. If we express it in a soul-spiritual way, the understanding could come only because man is able to die and carries within

him all the time the forces of death. In a physical way, we might say that death can enter because man deposits salts, i.e. solid mineral

substances, dead substances, not only in the body, but also in his brain. The brain has the constant tendency to deposit salt I mightsay, toward an incomplete ossification. So that the brain contains a constant tendency toward death. This inoculation of death had to

enter in mankind. And I might say, that the result of this necessary development that death began to have a real influence in man'slife was the outward acquaintance with death. If men had remained the same as in the past, where they did not really know death,

they would never have been able to develop an intellect, for the intellect is only possible in a world where death holds sway.

This is how matters stand, seen from a human aspect. But they can also be contemplated from the aspect of the higher hierarchies,

and then they will appear as follows: The higher hierarchies contain in their being the forces that have formed Saturn, the Sun, theMoon and finally the Earth. If the higher hierarchies had expressed their teachings amongst themselves, as it were, up to the Mystery

of Golgotha, they would have said: We can form the Earth out of Saturn, Sun and Moon. But if the Earth were to contain only whatwe have placed into Saturn, Sun and Moon it would never have been able to develop beings who know something about death, and

can therefore develop the intellect within them. We, the higher hierarchies, are able to let an Earth proceed out of the Moon, on whichthere are men who know nothing of death, and on which they cannot develop the intellect. It is not possible for us, higher hierarchies,

to form the Earth in such a way that it is able to supply the forces which lead man towards the intellect. We must rely, for this, on anentirely different being, on a being who comes from another direction than our own The Ahrimanic Being. Ahriman is a being who

does not belong to our hierarchy. Ahriman comes into the stream of evolution from another direction. If we tolerate Ahriman in theevolution of the Earth, if we allow him a share in it, he brings us death, and with it, the intellect, and we can take up in the human

being death and intellect. Ahriman knows death, because he is at one with the Earth and has trodden paths which have brought him

into connection with the evolution of the Earth. He is an initiate, a sage of death, and for this reason he is the ruler of the intellect. The

gods had to reckon with Ahriman if I may express it in this way. They had to say: the evolution cannot proceed without Ahriman.It is only a question of admitting Ahriman into the evolution. But if Ahriman is admitted and becomes the lord of death and,

consequently, of the intellect too, we forfeit the Earth, and Ahriman, whose sole interest lies in permeating the Earth with intellect,will claim the Earth for himself. The gods faced the great problem of losing to a certain extent their rule over the Earth in favour of

Ahriman. There was only one possibility that the gods themselves should learn to know something which they could not learn intheir godly abodes which were not permeated by Ahriman namely, that the gods should learn to know death itself, on the Earth,

through one of their emissaries the Christ. A god had to die on earth, and he had to die in such a way that this was not grounded in

the wisdom of the gods, but in the human error which would hold sway if Ahriman alone were to rule. A god had to pass throughdeath and he had to overcome death.

Thus the Mystery of Golgotha meant this for the gods: a greater wealth of knowledge through the wisdom of death. If a god had

not passed through death, the whole Earth would have become entirely intellectual, without ever reaching the evolution which thegods had planned for it from the very beginning.

In past ages, people had no knowledge of death. But they learnt to know death. They had to face the feeling that through death,i.e. through the intellect, we enter a stream of evolution which is quite different from the one from which we come.

Now the Christ taught his initiates that he came from a world where death was unknown; he learnt to know death, here on earth,and conquered death. If one understands this connection between the earthly world and the divine world, it will be possible to lead the

intellect back gain into spirituality. We might express approximately in this way the content of the esoteric teachings given by theChrist to his initiated disciples: it was the teaching of death, as seen from the scene of the divine world. If one wishes to penetrate into

the real depths of this esoteric teaching, one must realize that he who understands the entire evolution of mankind knows that the godshave overcome Ahriman by using his forces for the benefit of the Earth, but his power has been broken because the gods themselves

learnt to know death in the being of Christ. Indeed, the gods have placed Ahriman into the evolution of the earth, but, in making useof him, they have forced him to come down into the evolution of the earth without completing his own rulership. He who learns to

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know Ahriman since the Mystery of Golgotha and he who knew him before, knows that Ahriman has waited for the world-historic

moment in which he will not only invade the unconscious and subconscious in man, as in the case since the days of Atlantis (youknow this through my Occult Science), but will invade also man's consciousness. If we apply human expressions to the willing of

gods, we might say that Ahriman has waited with longing for the moment in which to invade human consciousness with his power.

His purpose was thwarted because he knew nothing of the divine plan whereby a being the Christ was to be sent to the Earth, abeing who underwent death. Thus the intervention of Ahriman was possible, but the sharp edge was taken off his rule. Since then,

Ahriman uses every opportunity to encourage men in the exclusive use of the intellect. Ahriman has not lost all hope today that hewill succeed in inducing men to use only their intellect. What would this imply? If Ahriman would succeed in convincing men against

all other convictions that man can live only in his body and that, as a spirit-soul being, he cannot be separated from his body, the ideaof death would seize the souls so strongly that Ahriman would be able to realize his plans quite easily. Ahriman hopes for this always.

One might say, for instance, that special joy fills the heart of Ahriman if one can speak of a heart in Ahriman's case, but this is acomparison, for I must always use human expressions in cases where other expressions should really be found that special joy lives

in Ahriman's soul since the period stretching from the forties of the 19th century until about the end of the 19th century; in thepredominant sway of materialism Ahriman could cherish new hopes for his rule over the earth. In this time even theology becomes

materialistic. I have mentioned already that theology has become unchristian and that the theologian from Basle, Overbeck, wrote abook in which he tried to prove that modern theology is no longer Christian. This gave new hopes to Ahriman.

An antagonism to Ahriman exists today only in the teachings like those that stream through Anthroposophy. If Anthroposophycan again make clear to men the independence of the spirit-soul being which is not dependent on the bodily being, Ahriman will have

to give up his hopes for the time. The battle of the Christ against Ahriman is again possible. And we can have a foreboding of this in

the Temptation described in the Gospel. But a full understanding can be gained only by penetrating into what I have often set forth,namely, that Lucifer plays a greater part in the older evolution of mankind, and that Ahriman began to have an influence on human

consciousness since the Mystery of Golgotha. He had an influence also before that time, but not on the consciousness of man.

If we look at the human mind and soul we must say that the most important point in mankind's evolution lies where man learns toknow that the Christ-impulse contains a living force which enables him to overcome death in himself, when he unites himself with it.

Seen from the spiritual world this implies that Ahriman was drawn into the evolution of the earth by the hierarchies belonging toSaturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, etc. But his claims of rulership were hedged in because they were placed at the service of the evolution of

the earth. Ahriman has, as it were, been forced to enter the evolution of the earth. Without him, the gods could not have placedintellectualism into mankind and if they had not succeeded in taking off the sharp edge to Ahriman's rule through the Christ event,

Ahriman would have rendered the whole earth intellectual from within and material from without. The Mystery of Golgotha is notonly an inner mystical event; we must look upon it entirely as an outer event which cannot, however, be set forth according to an

outer materialistic, historical investigation. It must be set forth in such a way as to show the entrance of Ahriman into the evolution ofthe earth, and, at the same time, the overcoming of Ahrimanism, to a certain extent. Thus we have a battle of the gods which was

enacted through the Mystery of Golgotha. That a battle of the gods took place on that occasion, is contained also in the esotericteachings imparted by the Christ to his initiated disciples, after his resurrection. If we are to designate that which existed in the form

of an esoteric Christianity, we might say that in past ages of the evolution of the earth people knew of the existence of these worldsthrough the manifestations that I have characterized a short while ago. But these divine worlds could not tell them anything

concerning death, for death did not exist in the worlds of the gods, and it did not exist for man, because he gained knowledge only of

the steady uninterrupted progress of the spirit and soul through the spheres of the gods. Man came nearer and nearer to the

understanding of death. By yielding himself up to the Christ, he could gain for himself a sure power which enabled him to overcomedeath. This is man's inner evolution.

But the esoteric element which Christ gave to his initiated disciples consisted therein, that He told them: What took place onGolgotha, is the reflection of superterrestial events and of the relationship between the worlds of the gods connected with Saturn, Sun,

Moon and the present Earth, and Ahriman. The cross of Golgotha cannot be looked upon as something earthly, but as somethinghaving a meaning for the entire universe this was the content of esoteric Christianity.

Perhaps we can awaken a particular feeling in connection with esoteric Christianity: Imagine two esoteric disciples of the Christ,who progress more and more in the acquisition of an esoteric Christianity, and imagine them speaking together while they are still

battling with their doubts: One of them would say more or less the following words to the other one: The Christ who is teaching us,has descended from worlds which are known from the past. Gods were known in past ages, but they were gods who could not speak

of death. If we had remained with these gods, we would never have learnt anything concerning the nature of death. The godsthemselves had first to send down to the earth a divine being, in order to learn something concerning death though one of their own

ranks. After His resurrection, Christ teaches us what the gods had to fulfill in order to guide the evolution of the earth to a right end. Ifwe keep to him, we will learn something that men could not learn until then. We learn what the gods did behind the scenes of the

worlds's existence in order to further the evolution of the earth in the right way. We learn how they brought in the forces of Ahriman,

without allowing them to be of harm to man, but to be of use to him. What the initiated disciples received as the esoteric teaching ofthe risen Christ was something deeply moving. A disciple, such as the one described above, could only have continued by saying:

Today we would know nothing at all concerning the gods, for we would be in the meshes of death had Christ not died and risen, and

had He not taught us, after His resurrection, the experiences of the gods concerning death. As human beings, we must immerseourselves into a period of time in which we can no longer know anything of the gods. The gods found a new way of speaking to us.

This way went through the Mystery of Golgotha. The essential knowledge conveyed to the disciples through the Mystery of Golgotha,was that men could again approach the divine worlds which they had left. In the first period of the Christian evolution, the disciples

were permeated by this stirring teaching. Many a one, whom history barely mentions, bore within him the knowledge which he could

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have gained only because in the early times he had enjoyed the teaching of the risen Christ himself, or else because he was connected

in some way with the teachers who had been taught by the Christ.

Later on, all these things were exteriorized. They were exteriorized to such an extent that the first heralds of Christianity attachedgreat value to the fact of being able to say that they were the disciples of one who had been taught by a disciple of the apostles. It was

a continuous development, for he who imparted the teaching, had known one who had seen an apostle, i.e. one who had known theLord himself, after his resurrection. In the past, some value was still attached to this living development, but the form in which it

reached a later mankind was already exteriorized. It had assumed the aspect of an outer historical description. But, essentially, it goesback to what I have just set forth. The incorporation of the intellect, which began already, and particularly, during the fourth and fifth

centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, and underwent a special change in the fifteenth century the beginning of the fifth post-

atlantean epoch this development of the intellect brought about the loss of the ancient wisdom which enabled man to graspsomething of the spiritual truths, whereas the new wisdom was not there. To a certain extent, men forgot for a whole age everythingthat had an esoteric significance in Christianity.

As stated, some records dealing with this esoteric knowledge remained in the keeping of secret societies, the members of whichno longer understood the content of these records in our age, certainly not. These records really refer to the teachings that were

imparted by the risen Christ to some of his initiated disciples.

Suppose that the ancient Hebrew teaching had not received new life through Christianity then, Paul's conviction before theevent at Damascus would have been justified. For, Paul more or less accepted the view that there is an old traditional teaching, which

existed originally as a divine-spiritual revelation given to men in a distant past, in the spiritual form which I have described. Then, this

was preserved in written records. Amongst the Hebrews, there were scribes who knew what was contained in the records from out of

the ancient wisdom of the gods. The sentence that condemned Christ-Jesus to death came from such scribes. While he was still Saul,Paul looked up to this original divine wisdom of the past and thought that this ancient wisdom was the source of the knowledge whichcame streaming down even to the scribes of his time. The fact that prominent men took up the calling of a scribe, could, however,

bring this divine wisdom only as far as the pronouncing of righteous sentences. Impossible quite impossible for an innocentman to be condemned to death through crucifixion! Especially if things took the course they did take during the trial of Christ Jesus.

This was the course of Paul's thoughts. Only the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, was already entangled instinctively in quite anotherworld-conception and could utter the pregnant sentence: What is Truth? Paul, as Saul, could not possibly imagine that what had taken

place according to a righteous judgement, might not be truth. What a conviction had to be gained by Paul? The conviction that therecan be error in the truth which used to come streaming down to men from the gods, for men have changed it into error into an error

so strong, that the most innocent of all had to pass through death. The original divine wisdom streams down as far as the wisdom ofthe scribes, who were the Hebrew contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha. This wisdom can only contain truth thought Saul.

But he had to think otherwise. When Paul was still Saul, he used to say: If he, who died on the cross, is indeed the Christ and theMessiah, this current of wisdom must contain error in its truth, and error brought Christ to the cross. That is, man must have turned

the old divine wisdom into error. Naturally, only the actual fact that this is so, indeed, could convince Saul. Only Christ himself couldconvince him, by appearing to him in the event at Damascus. What did this mean for Saul? It meant that a divine wisdom no longer

existed, for the Ahrimanic element had entered into it.

Thus Paul reached the point of seeing that mankind's evolution had been seized by an enemy and that this enemy is the source of

error on earth. In bringing the intellect, he brings also the possibility of error, and, in its greatest aspect, this error is responsible for thedeath on the cross of the most innocent of all. First, this conviction must be gained that He who has no stain upon him, died on the

cross. This enabled men to see how Ahriman crept into the evolution of humanity and how a supersensible, superterrestial eventexisted in the evolution of the Ego, through the enactment of the Mystery of Golgotha. An esoteric fact can never be merely mystical.

It is always an enormous mistake to explain mere mysticism as esotericism. The esoteric knowledge is always a knowledge of factswhich take place, as such, in the spiritual world, and remain hidden behind the veil of the physical world. For, behind this veil, the

adjustment between the divine world and Ahriman takes place, as enacted in the death on the cross of Christ-Jesus. Paul felt that error,leading to the death on the cross, can only enter a world wherein man is seized by the Ahrimanic powers. And when he had

understood this, he learnt the truth of esoteric Christianity.

Paul was undoubtedly one of those who belonged, in this sense, to the initiates. But initiation gradually died out, through the

growing influence of intellectualism. Today we must return to a knowledge of esoteric Christianity: we must know again thatChristianity does not only contain what is exoteric, but goes beyond the forebodings that can be awakened through the Gospels.

Today very little is said concerning an esoteric Christianity, but humanity must return to this knowledge, which is not based on outerdocuments. We must learn to fathom what the Christ himself taught to his initiated disciples after his resurrection, and we must take

for granted that he could impart such teachings only after having passed through an experience, here on earth, which he could nothave had in the divine world for until the Mystery of Golgotha death did not exist in the divine worlds. No being of the divine

worlds had passed through death Christ is the first-born who passed through death from the world of the hierarchies, connected

with the evolution of the Earth that went through Saturn, Sun and Moon.

The secret of Golgotha is the inclusion of death into life. Before Golgotha, the knowledge of life did not include death. Nowdeath became known as an essential part of life, as an experience which strengthens life. Humanity went through a weaker form of life

when nothing was known of death; humanity must live more forcefully if it wants to pass through death and yet remain alive. Death,in this connection, is also the intellect. Men possessed a comparatively weaker sense of life when they had no need of the intellect.

The older people who obtained their knowledge of the divine worlds in the form of images and inner manifestations, did not dieinwardly. They always remained alive. They could laugh at death because they remained alive inwardly. The Greeks still relate how

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happy the ancients were because, when death approached them, they became so dazed within, that they hardly noticed it. This was the

last remnant of a world-conception that knew nothing of death. Modern man experiences the intellect. Intellect renders us cold anddead within. It paralyses us. When our intellect is active, we do not really live. We must feel that when we are thinking, we are not

really alive, that our life is poured into the empty pictures of our understanding. A strong life is needed in order to experience the

living activity contained in the lifeless images formed by our intellect, a creative, living activity inspite of all. A strong life is neededto reach the sphere where moral impulses flow out of the force of pure thinking, and where we learn to understand the freedom in

man, through the impulses of pure thinking.

This is what I tried to set forth in my Philosophy of Freedom, which is really an ethical conception, and tries to show how dead

thoughts can be awakened into life in the form of moral impulses, and thus be led to resurrection. An inner Christianity is undoubtedly

contained in this Philosophy of Freedom.

With these explanations I wished to place before your souls, from a particular aspect, something concerning anesoteric Christianity. This age, which is so full of disputes concerning the nature of Christianity in an

exoteric, historical sense, needs an esoteric Christianity it is necessary to point out the esotericteachings of Christianity. I hope that they will not be taken lightly, but with the needed earnestness and

responsibility. When speaking of such things, one feels how difficult it is to clothe these experiences in thewords of modern speech, which has already become abstract. For this reason, I have tried to attune yoursouls by describing the inner processes of man in the form of images, in order to form a thread leadingfrom the single human being to that which constitutes, in an esoteric sense, the historical evolution of

humanity, which is contained, as something essential, in the Mystery of Golgotha.

The Festivals and Their MeaningII

Easter

Lecture V -- The Teachings of the Risen Christ

(see Note 1)

I WANT to speak to-day about a certain aspect of the Mystery of Golgotha of which I have often spoken before in more intimateanthroposophical gatherings. What there is to be said about the Mystery of Golgotha is so extensive in range, so rich in content and of

such significance, that new light needs constantly to be shed upon it before any real approach can be made to this greatest of allMysteries in the evolution of the earth and of humanity.

The importance of the Mystery of Golgotha can be rightly assessed only when we envisage two streams of evolution in man'searthly existence: the stream which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha and the stream which, following it, will continue for the rest of

the earth's existence.

In speaking of the very early period in earth-evolution when thinking of a certain kind dream-like, imaginative, but still,

thinking was already active, we must be quite clear that in those times men possessed faculties whereby if I may so express it they were able to commune with Beings of a higher cosmic order. From the bookOccult Scienceand other works of mine, you

know something of these Beings of the higher Hierarchies. In his ordinary consciousness to-day man knows little of these Beings, forhis intercourse with them has, as it were, been broken off. In earlier periods of human evolution it was different. To imagine that

coming into contact with a Being of the higher Hierarchies in those ancient times in any way resembled the meeting between two menincarnate in physical bodies to-day would of course be a wrong conclusion. Such intercourse had quite a different character. What

these Beings communicated to man in the original, primeval language of the earth could be apprehended only by spiritual organs.Momentous secrets of existence were communicated by these Beings, secrets which flowed into the human heart and awakened the

consciousness that above and on all sides where we to-day see only clouds and stars earthly existence is connected with divineworlds. Super-earthly Beings belonging to these worlds came down in a spiritual manner to the men of earth, revealing themselves in

such a way that through them men received what we may call the primal wisdom. The revelations proceeding from these Beingscontained an abundance of wisdom which in their earthly life men could not have discovered themselves. For at the beginning of

earth-evolution the period of which I am now speaking men could discover little through their own faculties. Whatever vision,whatever perceptive knowledge they possessed was received from their divine Teachers. These divine teachings were infinitely rich in

content, but one thing they did not include a thing which it was unnecessary for men of those times to know, but which for thepresent-day humanity is essential. The divine Teachers imparted many aspects of knowledge, truths in profusion, but they never spoke

of the two fundamental boundaries of man's earthly life; they never spoke of birth and death.

Needless to say, in this short hour I cannot attempt to speak of everything that was communicated to the human race in those

ancient times by the divine Teachers. A great deal is already known to you. But I want now to stress the point that among all thoseteachings there were none concerning birth and death. The reason for this was that for the men of those times and for a

considerable period after them it was unnecessary to have knowledge of the facts of birth and death. The whole consciousness of

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mankind has changed in the course of earth-evolution. The animal consciousness of to-day, even that of the higher animals, must

never be compared with human consciousness, even as it was in those ages of primitive antiquity. Yet we may perhaps find a point ofapproach by considering the life of the animal to-day. This lies at a level below the human, whereas the earliest form of the life of

primitive man lay, in a certain respect, above the present level of the human, in spite of having certain animal-like characteristics. If

you think, without preconceived ideas, about the animal to-day, you will say that the animal is unconcerned with birth and deathbecause its existence is wholly passed in the state of life between them. Disregarding birth although here too, of course, it is an

obvious fact we need think only of the carefree lack of concern with which the animal lives on towards death. The animal acceptsdeath. It is simply transformation of its existence, a transition from individual to group-soul existence. The animal does not experience

any such deep incision into life as is the case with the human being.

Now as I said, the primeval man of earth in spite of his animal-like organisation was at a higher level than the animal; hepossessed an instinctive clairvoyance which enabled him to commune, to have intercourse with, his divine Teachers. But, like theanimal of to-day, he was unconcerned with the approach of death. It never occurred to him, if I may so express it, to pay any

particular attention to death. And why? With his instinctive clairvoyance, the primeval man was clearly aware of what was still hisnature even after his descent through birth from the spiritual world into the physical world. He knew that his own essential being had

entered into a physical body; and because he could say with certain knowledge, An immortal, eternal being lives in me, thetransformation taking place at death was not a matter of interest or concern to him. At most the process was like that experienced by a

snake when it sheds its skin and has it replaced by another. The impression of birth and death was taken much more as a matter ofcourse; birth and death were far less drastic incisions in human existence. Men still had clear vision of the life of the soul; to-day they

have no such vision.

Even in dreams the transition from the sleeping to the waking state is hardly perceptible and the dream, with its pictures, is

regarded as part of the sleeping state, as itself a semi-sleep. But what came to primeval man in his dream-pictures belonged, in reality,to a waking state, not yetfully awake. He knew that what he received in these dream-pictures was reality. In this way he felt and

experienced his life of soul. Therefore questions about birth and death could not seem to him as crucial as they must inevitably be to-day.

This condition was very marked in the earliest epochs of human evolution on the earth, but it faded gradually away. As menbegan more and more to be aware that death makes a drastic incision not only into earthly physical life, but into the life of the soul as

well, their attention was inevitably drawn to the fact of birth. On account of this change in human consciousness, earthly life assumeda character of increasing importance for men; and because experience of the life of soul was also growing dim, they felt themselves

more and more removed during their sojourn on earth from an existence of soul-and-spirit. This condition became more and moremarked as the time of the Mystery of Golgotha approached. Even among the Greeks it had reached the point where they felt life

outside the physical body to be a shadow-existence, and regarded death as an event fraught with tragedy. The knowledge received bymen from their earliest, divine Teachers did not cover the facts of birth and death. Hence before the Mystery of Golgotha took place,

men were exposed to the danger of having to face experiences in their earthly life that would be unknown and incomprehensible totheir earthly consciousness namely, the experiences of birth and death.

Now let us imagine that those early, divine Teachers of humanity had descended to the earthly realm at the time of the Mystery of

Golgotha. They might have been able, through the Mysteries, to reveal themselves to a few specially prepared pupils or men of

knowledge, to communicate to priests trained in the Mysteries the wealth of the ancient, divine wisdom; but in the whole range ofthese teachings there would have been nothing concerning birth and death. The riddle of death would not have been presented to man

through the revelations of this divine wisdom, not even within the Mysteries; and in their outer life on earth men would have observedfacts of vital importance and interest to them namely the facts of birth and death of which the gods had said nothing! And why?

You must approach this matter with a certain freedom from bias, laying aside many of the conceptions that have become part oftraditional religion to-day, and be clear about the following. The Beings of the higher Hierarchies who were the divine Teachers of

primeval humanity had never experienced birth and death in their own realms. For birth and death, in the form in which they areexperienced on the earth, are experienced only on the earth, and, again, only by human beings on the earth. The death of an animal

and the dying of a plant are altogether different matters from the death of a human being. And in the divine worlds where dwelt thefirst great Teachers of mankind there is no birth or death, but only transformation, metamorphosis from one state of existence into

another. These divine Teachers, therefore, had no inner understanding of the facts of dying and being-born.

Now to these divine Teachers belongs the host of beings connected with Jahve, with the Bodhisattvas, with the early interpreters

of the world to humanity. Just think how in the Old Testament, for example, the mystery of death as it confronts men, comes to be

fraught with an increasing sense of tragedy, and how, in fact, none of the teaching conveyed by the Old Testament gives any adequateor revealing illumination on the subject of death. If, therefore, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha there had happened nothing that

differed from what had already happened in the realm of the earth, and in the higher worlds connected with the earth, men would have

faced a terrible situation in their earthly evolution. On the earth they would have lived through the experiences of birth and death,which now confronted them, not as simple metamorphoses but as drastic transitions in their whole human existence, and they could

have learnt nothing of the significance and purpose of death and of birth in the earthly life of the human being. In order that theremight gradually be imparted to mankind teaching concerning birth and death, it was necessary for the Being we call the Christ to enter

the realm of earthly life, the Christ Who indeed belongs to those worlds whence the ancient Teachers too had come, but Who inaccordance with a decision taken in these divine worlds, accepted for Himself a destiny different from that of the other Beings of the

divine Hierarchies connected with the earth. He lent Himself to the divine decree of higher worlds that He should incarnate in anearthly body and with His own divine soul pass through birth and death on earth. (seeNote 2)

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